Hacker News Reader

Comment by qqtt | Hacker News Reader

> EV cars have a finite lifespan

But the same is true of ICE cars. Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators (not to mention routine maintenance like oil changes). EV's win on ongoing maintenance, and even if you have to replace a battery at an authorized dealership, you will still come out ahead versus the maintenance cost you would have otherwise paid.

In terms of 'catastrophic battery failure' compared to 'catastrophic engine failure' - not sure the EV would lose that battle either.

In short, yes, EV's have a finite lifespan, but so do ICE cars, and ICE cars are much more complicated, with many more expensive components that can fail, and are extremely expensive to replace.

View on HN

Engines and transmissions last 15+ years, easily 20+ with regular maintenance. Everything else you mentioned is cheap and easy to replace.

Yes, other than the battery, EVs are very low maintenance. But that doesn't matter at all to low income people who usually buy 10 year old cars. They are guaranteed to owe a large repair bill on any car that is available to them.

Batteries last a long time too. The Leaf is a bad example because they messed up the battery management somehow, but there are Teslas on the road with lots of miles and very little battery degradation.

Batteries last well when you have a large one (daily commute is a 15% discharge, not a 90% discharge) and active thermal management.

The EVs I see on the second-hand market for $2000 have neither. It'll be a few years before I can get a used tesla for $2000.

I don't think many people claim that the used EV market is very good right now. It will become a lot better in another ten to twenty years though.

There's an interesting statistical bias in the Used EV Market that first owner life statistics are way up on average versus comparable ICE models. We're edging past the point where that's likely "just" a symptom of early adopters and it may indicate easier maintenance curves on EVs and longer useful lifetimes for EVs and that the used EV market may look very different than the used ICE market. Though as stated, it will likely be another decade or two before we have a stable market to figure that out.

What you're saying doesn't make any sense. Catalytic converters, fuel pumps, and alternators are easy to replace. This doesn't mean that ICE cars just disappear from the road when those components fail.

Anyone with mechanical knowledge, tools, and patience can rebuild an engine or a transmission. It really is not that difficult.

When you have a vehicle with a monolithic conformal battery pack, once you can't buy a new one the car is junk. Unless you just so happen to own a factory you can afford to retool.

There will be a huge 3rd party industry replacing and upgrading batteries for EVs.

It doesn't exist yet beyond some small enterprises because there isn't enough volume: even 10+ year old EVs are still going strong with very few battery issues. We need to wait longer to get any business going.

There was a dude in Finland who replaced and upgraded Nissan Leaf batteries, he had to stop because it was a) impossible to get new batteries due to huge demand b) ran out of customers.

I've thought about doing this, but I envision the legal headaches and DRM that will inevitably creep into the batteries being not worth the effort. It's even possible to DRM at the cell level, and I fully expect OEMs to do that.

You can't get DRM "at the cell level". The batteries are just simple Panasonic 18650s, adding some DRM component to each and every one of them would be cost-inefficient and would also cause a huge problem if the chip fails during warranty.

The controllers are black boxes though, but you can get 3rd party units for Tesla batteries _today_. JerryRigEverything on Youtube built his own EV Hummvee on the military chassis using some Model X batteries and all 3rd party electronics.

It wasn't plug and play, but perfectly doable in a semi-well stocked home garage.

The bigger problem is batteries have moved into "structural elements" in the current "skateboard" designs. Removing the batteries potentially damages the foundational structure of the car and may need expensive mitigations.

Not following you here: Your suggestion for evidence that 3rd party batteries will be available is that some guy in Finland couldn't get enough supply?

A single hobbyist in Finland could run a profitable business replacing Nissan Leaf batteries unofficially. The dude managed to install a 25% larger battery in the car and fool the on board computer to accept it.

Just imagine what can be done with actual resources and R&D.

The current limiting issue isn't skill or technology, but available new batteries. They can't make them fast enough even for new cars, never mind for spare parts.

But when battery production ramps high enough, there's absolutely nothing preventing people from upgrading existing batteries with more modern tech - bigger battery capacity in the same space.

There will also be a huge industry converting "dead" EV batteries to in-house battery backups. A car with 50% battery degradation is a bit iffy, but the battery will still have tens of kWh of usable capacity. Enough to run a house for a day or two in a pinch - or just store cheap energy and sell it back to the grid when the price goes up.

"But when battery production ramps high enough"

If we're talking hypothetically, why not just expect someone to develop a battery that lasts forever?

There are no technological or supply barriers to the battery production ramp-up.

It just takes time to build enough factories to produce enough.

>Anyone with mechanical knowledge, tools, and patience can

Just like everyone with a PC and an internet connection can become a software developer; there are a few steps in between why it doesen't "just" happen

I don't think he is making the argument that anyone can/will do it, but that there is and will be plenty of mechanics willing and able to do the work and able to procure the parts, which he saying will not be the case with replacement battery packs on old cars.

There is some reason to believe this; stories like this [1] are going around, where EV owners have been told they need to replace the battery pack but, by the way, the part cannot be procured.

[1] https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/electric-car-battery...

Why are you assuming that new batteries will not be available?

> Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators

I have driven approximately 700k miles across five vehicles and never touched any of these, nor have I ever been concerned about them, except with the vague idea such things can become a problem around ~250-300k miles.

What I have had enormous trouble with in all ICE cars is the electronics, which if anything are more populous in EVs.

The idea that "EV maintenance is clearly superior to ICE maintenance" seems like a baffling canard to me, aside from relieving me of the very minor burden of changing my oil twice a year or so, and some even more infrequent $20 filter replacements or simple spark plug replacements I've had to do exactly once which required only a deep socket. I've done more maintenance on my desktop computer.

Which miles were you driving on those ICEs? The first 100k will have few issues. Same applies for EVs.

I have driven similar amounts and I've had to replace:

  - Turbo (~1k€)
  - Radiator (300€)
  - Clutch
  - Dual-mass flywheel (1.5k€ combined with the clutch)
  - DPF (would've cost upwards of 2k€, bypassed it for 500€)

And a ton of other tiny sub-500€ fixes I didn't bother keeping track of.

Dunno if you always drove brand-new cars or were really lucky.

For my current EV (2,5 years of ownership) I've had to replace the cabin filter twice and I've filled the washer fluid a half dozen times. That's it.

I’ve had a few electronics failures happen within two years of owning a car. Let’s give your EV a lot longer than two years before we pass judgement on it, though. I’ve had displays fail at 30k, that’s obviously not an ICE problem. (It was bad solder.)

None of my cars stayed with me longer than 220k, but I have never heard of anyone that wasn’t driving cars from the 70s and 80s having to do those things, or with very high mileage.

The drivetrain in an EV is WAY simpler than any ICE. That alone will provide a ton of reliability. There's pretty much just one moving part in the engine and it's pretty binary. It's either working or it's completely broken.

No more weird running issues where it works just fine to 2000rpm, but at 4000rpm makes that weird noise. Or the transmission rattles a bit at exactly 3700rpm, but is fine on other rpms.

Yes, an electric motor is conceptually simpler. Yes, there’s less moving parts. But the powertrain in modern cars is engineered to a point where it is incredibly reliable and can be expected to last to the point where the rest of the car is falling apart too.

There will be plenty of “weird running issues” from software bugs and electronics failures, which are the worst and least reliable parts in ICE cars as well. An EV is not just a simple electric motor packed into a case.

Finally, as I noted elsewhere in the thread, Tesla is offering the same powertrain warranty on Model 3s that Kia is offering on their ICE cars. Clearly Tesla doesn’t have any more faith in electric powertrains than Kia has in ICE powertrains. If the EV powertrain was really so much more reliable than ICE, Tesla would be offering a standard 250k mile warranty on the powertrain instead of the same 100k warranty offered by some ICE manufacturers.

Engine work, transmission maintenance or rebuild, replacing fuel pump, belts, alternator, etc. these are all totally standard and very common repairs for ICE vehicles no matter how many miles you say you’ve driven without having to touch them…

EV maintenance costs have been well studied at this point and are lower than ICE, and for very sensible reasons, it’s not a mystery or a canard.

There have been many many studies. Here’s a random one;

https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/evs-offer-big-sa...

Very common? You have anything to back that up? I don’t even know anyone whose had to do any of that. I know that people do, but certainly not “commonly” unless they’re driving a very old, high mileage car they don’t want to part with.

I’ve seen lots of electronics failures. This will only be worse in EVs, or at least EVs like Teslas, where things like door handles have been motorized.

The average age of a car is ~12[0] years in Finland. Out of the 7 people I often interact with that have cars, 7 have had those, and a lot of other parts fail

[0] https://moottori.fi/liikenne/jutut/suomen-henkiloauton-keski...

Either there is something especially harsh about Finland's environment, or whatever cars they're making there are uniquely bad. That's absolutely unheard of where I live. 12 years is definitely not what I meant by "old".

Of course a sufficiently old car will be falling apart, whether it's part of the "ICE" or not - the suspension and shocks will be need to be replaced, door seals degraded or positively worthless, interior will be faded and cracking, wheel bearings fail, AC compressor goes out, various sensors fail (my favorite so far was the antitheft sensor)...when everything starts going bad, that's when I would expect the engine to be just be worn; basically, I would expect the ICE to last as long, or outlast, the rest of the car, save any issues on the left hand of the bathtub curve from manufacturing defects that should be covered under warranty. What you're saying is totally wild and alien to me. Mechanics must get a lot of business there.

If EVs are so reliable and maintenance free, why is the Tesla drivetrain warranty only 100k miles on the Model 3? That's no different than many ICE cars (eg I know Kia has the same warranty on ICE cars), and also well within the middle of the bathtub curve for an ICE car.

A thing to consider is the average means there are tons of older cars in the mix, but some new ones slowly creeping in. There are lots of cars from the 90s or even 80s driving around where I'm from. Weather can be quite unforgiving for cars here, temperature ranging from -25C(-13F) to +30C(86F) year round. Lots of salt and some types of pavement seem to be exceptionally bad for timing gears[0]. Owning a car is likely the most expensive thing a normal person can do in Finland.

[0] https://yle.fi/uutiset/74-20000198

I think it's fair to say, based on your own link which is about research into why timing belts are not lasting as long as everywhere else (a third to half the time!), some of this is outlier. And they note that this dust would also abnormally wear brakes, anything rotating, and the car's painted surfaces, which EVs also have.

But for the rest of it, like temperature differences...this is still going to be a major impact on EVs, and like ICE cars, it won't be just the engine you have to worry about.

As I noted upthread, Tesla has the same powertrain warranty that, say, Kia has. It isn't much of a testament to the vaunted EV reliability that the most famous EV manufacturer doesn't have more faith in their electric powertrains than Kia does in their ICE powertrains.

There are teslas getting half a million miles on them already..

Okay. I know a guy with 500k on his Ford Ranger. That doesn’t tell us anything about average maintenance in that time, or over time.

Years matter as well, not just mileage. I have a 20 year old truck and the interior is basically just destroyed from sunlight and time.

Each of those components can be replaces for much less. I recently spent 700 on replacing the alternator, 12v battery, engine pulley, and spark plugs. That's significantly less than replacing an EV battery.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com